The poet does not fail to remind us of her absence in her mother’s past. And she does so in an almost assertive and abrupt sort of way ‘I am not here yet.’ The element of jealousy comes out in these words. The daughter may not intend it, but she seems to feel jealous and a little annoyed that her mother is having all this fun sans her. This emotion is similar to when a mother leaves her toddler at home and goes out to meet her friends. The child tends to feel left out. The narrator gives us a picture of her mother’s social life, where she would dance the night away with ‘the thousand eyes’ that could be a metaphor for the giant disco ball or maybe for the onlookers in the ballroom. All this while, the thought of having a child never even crosses her mind. She had no responsibilities at that time and her main concern were her teenage fantasies of finding the right lover for her. The poet says an unusual thing here. She says that she knew her mother used to dance. This tells us how close they are and maybe there are still some traits of her old personality that remain. She goes on to tell us that her mother had a bit of a rebellious streak. She would come home late and would willingly take the ‘hiding’ as her she felt her late night outs were always worth the spanking. The tone of this stanza gives us the feeling that the poet is looking at the past from a distance.
In the third stanza, the daughter refers to the moment of her birth with the phrase 'my loud, possessive yell', conveying the idea that this was a pivotal, life-changing moment. She then goes on to say that the ten years following her birth were the mother’s favourite years. An alternate interpretation is that, she could also mean that the ten years preceding her birth (i.e., her teens) were here best years and thus implies that the birth of the poet spoilt all the fun and saddled her with responsibilities. The poet reminisces the period of her childhood, where she would play with her mother’s high-heeled red shoes. She calls them ‘relics’ as they are remnants of her mother’s youth and are no longer used. She has no ballroom parties or grand occasions to wear them to anymore. The mention of her mother’s ‘ghost’ clattering is a reference to the metaphorical death of her mother’s youthful and spirited personality. The clattering again refers to her red high-heeled shoes that symbolize her young days. ‘I see you, clear as scent’ is a deliberate mixing of the sense called synaethesia to show how a familiar smell can trigger a vivid recollection. The poet again jumps back to the imaginary past where her mother is probably kissing her lover under a lit up tree. She then affectionately chides her mother, ‘and whose small bites on your neck, sweetheart?’ It is somewhat of a reversal of roles where the daughter is protective and chides her mother and refers to her as ‘sweetheart’ as she imagines the love bites on her mother’s neck.
The fourth and final stanza begins with another incident in the daughter’s childhood, where her mother would teach her the ‘Cha cha cha’ on the way back from Church, suggesting that even though there may not be any occasion for her to dance this sensual Cuban dance, she still remembers it. The line, ‘Stamping stars on the wrong pavement’ has many hidden meanings. ‘Stamping’ refers to her mother’s sensible shoes and is a direct contrast to the ‘clattering’ of her high-heeled party shoes. It impresses the idea that motherhood has caused many physical and mental changes in her. The ‘wrong pavement’ suggests that looking at the photograph, the daughter feel that her mother’s rightful place was in a ballroom or maybe even in Hollywood (reference to the stars on the pavement in Hollywood). She admires her mother and celebrates her glamorous love and nothing could ever want her to change her mother. She uses a hyperbole to emphasize this point, when she claims that she wanted her mother even before she had been born! The last line captures the essence of the mother’s teen years, ‘ sparkle and waltz and laugh’ and she says that even though these qualities cannot be seen on the outside, she can feel them in her mother’s deep love for her. Her love for life, fun and frolic in her youth has translated into her love for her daughter in her motherhood. The poem ends on a note of enduring and eternal love between the mother and daughter.
The poem consists of four, equally weighted stanzas of five lines each. The poem is not in any chronological order. The poet constantly and deliberately flits from an imaginary past to a real past and also at some points to the present. It makes the poem a bit difficult to follow but more importantly, it give the impression that the mother’s past, her own past and the present are all equally vivid and real for her. The poem is a true refection of her thoughts as most people don’t think in a systematic order in emotional moments and that is why this poem, just like people’s thoughts, is a bit confusing and difficult to follow at first. Duffy tries to give us a soulful insight into her mother and at the same time lets slip her own character and emotions. When she contrasts her mother’s glamorous, almost surreal past and the reality of the present, she lets us inside her own heart, wherein lies a bit of guilt that she took away her mother’s ambitions, independence and her lively, free spirit.
Duffy writes this poem in the first person. The language and diction is informal and largely conversational (‘the best one, eh?’) and at times it is intimate (‘whose small bites on your neck, sweetheart?’). Duffy uses a great deal of imagery, especially to describe her mother’s youth, such as ‘fizzy’, ‘lights’, ‘stars’, ‘waltz’, ‘sparkle’, ‘winking’. She uses words that add glamour and a cinematic quality to the mother’s past. Sounds such as ‘shriek’, ‘clatters’ and ‘stamping’ have been used to convey and refer to different time periods. She has also used alliterations like ‘high-heeled’ and ‘love-lasts’ and metaphors like ‘thousand eyes’ in the poem.
Carol Ann Duffy has touched many themes such as the one of short-lived happiness. The poet’s mother had beautiful and glamorous youth but it did not last long. She could not compromise on her duties as a mother to follow her fantastical dreams. But then, she found happiness in something else- her daughter. The theme of sacrifice is the most prominent one here. Duffy recognizes her mother’s sacrifices her mother made in bringing her up and in turn pays a fitting tribute to her by virtue of this poem. Most poems tend to be written by mothers, either glorifying motherhood or their children, but Duffy has decided to look at the mother-daughter relationship from another perspective, from the point of view of a daughter when she realizes that she has not always been the centre of the universe of her mother and that she had a life and that too a perfectly happy one before the birth of her child. Duffy celebrates the enchantingly beautiful youth of her mother. She glorifies her spirited nature and regrets that she herself is the reason that her mother has had to limit and change herself. Duffy laments not knowing her mother when she was a teenager and having snatched away her hopes and dreams.
The poem is refreshing in the way a daughter enthuses over her mother’s past and ends up understanding her better, having realized that her mother was just like her in her teens as well. Like the daughter, the mother too was full of life, hopes and dreams. Very often when we see a mother, we don’t tend to go beyond her husband and children or at most her work or hobbies. Nobody tries to find out about her identity beyond her domestic one, the identity that was suppressed when she was confined to a new home and a new life. Carol Ann Duffy has done just that. She asks us to look at women, just as women. Not just as wives, not just as mothers but to search beyond that and recognize the sacrifice that they have made as individuals to fulfill those domestic roles.
